2 Texts and 13 Missed Calls (Or: When Sam Found Out)
by hiddenheadspace
Summary: Lucas and Sam Winchester are twins, younger brothers to Dean, best friends to Gabriel. Everything seems as fine as anything ever gets, at least until Sam overhears Gabriel's reasons for rejecting him. (Lucifer/Sam. Rated for incest.)
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I wrote this in like 1.5 hrs max which is why my writing style is whacky.

Warnings: INCEST, for the love of chocolate don't say I didn't warn you about the incest, past/implied child abuse, run-ons and comma splices and terrible grammar, samifer (which is a warning unto itself), unrequited love.

* * *

You can't be someone's best friend for years without knowing them inside and out, sometimes even better than they know themselves, and Gabriel had been their best friend forever, practically.

"Why didn't you?" Lucas asks with genuine curiosity. "I know you've at least thought about it. You like Sam enough."

Gabriel shrugs, and his expression was full of far too much kindness. "I wouldn't do that to you, Lu. That's not fair. I wouldn't want you hurt like that."

He'd flinched away (because someone _knew_, nobody had ever guessed, especially not Sam, but Gabriel knew, how long had he known) and Gabriel had let him go, still with that unbearable look of understanding.

At least he hadn't run away screaming. It was nice to know he wouldn't lose their friend over this.

Sometimes he envied Sam's easy relationship with Dean. They were brothers and they were friends. Sure, Dean and Lucas were friends and brothers, too, but Dean liked Sam better. Lucas didn't envy Sam for that. How could he envy Sam for having happiness? No, but the exhaustion of pretending not to notice the tension and the tug of being close enough to someone to know nearly everything about them (nearly everything, ha, sometimes he thought he didn't know Sam at all, and wasn't that something, he knew Sam better than anyone, even Gabriel), it was all, well, difficult at the best of times. (Sometimes it wasn't difficult at all.)

They spent an awkward week of Gabriel pulling away from them to give Sam space, and for once Sam didn't seem to want Lucas to comfort him (thirteen, Sam was rejected by the girl he invited to the dance, fifteen, Dad shouting again, Sam in his bed, Sam crying, Dean trying to talk to their dad, Sam holding onto him.) No, this time, Sam was distant, and that hurt more than anything, the idea that Sam might grow away from him, that Sam might want to have a life separate from his twin, from the person closest to him, his best of all friends.

A week and a half later (eleven days), Sam called him (called him, distance between them again, none of the closeness of their previous late at night conversations.)

"What did Gabriel mean?" Sam's voice is cool and unreadable.

"What did Gabriel mean when he said what?" Lucas was, understandably, he thought, confused. "When he rejected you?"

"After that. When you asked him why."

Lucas goes silent, and Sam babbles into the spreading silence between them. "I mean, I shouldn't have been listening, but you were talking about me and I didn't think you'd mind, but then he said—he said that he didn't want to hurt you, and I didn't understand, it didn't make sense, I could only think of one thing he might mean, and that didn't make any sense at all, you wouldn't, well, I didn't know how to ask you—Lucas? Are you there?"

He hangs up. He doesn't mean to, but he finds himself staring down at the words CALL ENDED and shaking, shaking all over, Gabriel knows, Sam knows, and everything would break now, he knew it would.

He wants to call Gabriel, he wants to go to Sam and tell him that something's wrong, that he needs help, but Sam's the whole problem, and Gabriel's away, he's visiting family, and he can't talk to Dean, Dean is their brother, he couldn't understand, he'd be disgusted.

Instead, he sits in their room in silence and pretends nothing's wrong.

A knock on their door. It's Dean. His expression is frightened but hiding it. He doesn't want to frighten Lucas, but now he is, there's not much that can frighten Dean except their father and something happening to one of his brothers, where's Sam.

"Where's Sam?" He says it aloud. Dean looks startled, and then unsurprised, and then frightened again.

"He's in the hospital. Car crash. He was with some friends—that goddamn Ruby chick—" Dean hardly ever swears in front of them. Their father swore a lot.

Sam. Hospital. "Is—"

He can't say it. _Is he okay_. Because he might not be. He might be broken and unfixable and break Lucas, too, he

"He's…" Silence. Deafening. Dean. Afraid. "He's hurt."

In the car, Lucas calls Gabriel, over and over, not leaving messages, just missed call after missed call after missed call PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE GABRIEL he writes PICK UP PICK UP WHY ARENT YOU PICKING UP PICK UP.

"Lu? Lu, what's wrong, what's happened?" Gabriel. Worried. Confused.

He can't speak, suddenly. His throat closes off.

"Lu? Lucas!" Frightened. "Talk to me."

"Sam," he manages. "Sam is—in the hospital."

"Oh, god," Gabriel says. Concerned. Not afraid anymore. Anxious. "Is he okay?"

"Dean says that there was a car crash. He's hurt. He'll recover."

"I'm coming down there," Gabriel says firmly.

"No, I'm okay, you're with your family—"

"You're important too," Gabriel says. Gabriel is what Sam should be. Wonderful. Best friend. Platonic. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Sam's awake when they get there. Injured. Dean talks to the doctors. It all goes over Lucas's head. He can't quite bring himself to go talk to (his brother) Sam. Their last conversation and the strange, new spaces between them hang too sharply around them, looping invisible barbed wire around his hands and feet and mouth. He'd hung up on Sam, who could've died. Guilt. Guilt like death, like storm clouds, like Dean's fear.

Gabriel drives straight through the night to get to them. To him. Gabriel drove to come help him. Not them. "Lucas," he says, not a name he uses often, twice now in one night. "Sam's okay?"

"Yes," he says, because he understood that much.

Gabriel nods seriously. "And you? Are you okay?"

"I think—I think he knows." But that's such a stupid thing to be upset over. "Sam could've died."

Gabriel hugs him. "I know this is going to sound stupid, but it's going to be okay, and I need you to believe that for me. Okay?"

He can't really talk (again, and it's irritating), so he hugs Gabriel back.

* * *

"Gabe?" Sam looks very young.

"Hey, Sammy." Gabriel hangs back a step from the bed, careful not to cross the boundary he set up when he turned Sam down. "You don't look so great."

"I feel like crap," Sam agrees.

"You gave us all a scare," Gabriel offers hesitantly. "I've never seen your brother so freaked out."

"Dean?"

Gabriel looks at him hard, watches his expressions carefully. "Don't play stupid."

Sam blinks away for a telling moment. "Yeah, Lucas, guess so." Now Sam wears a fake smile.

"So you do know." The tightness that has nothing to do with pain in Sam's face betrays him. Gabriel sighs, gives up, and flops down in the chair provided. "He was terrified, actually. It was scary to see him so upset." He doesn't specify whether he means over the accident or Sam knowing.

Sam looks away, uncomfortable. "He's my brother. My twin. I—"

"Anyone would be uneasy over finding out that their brother has incestuous thoughts about them." Not much point in beating around the bush.

Sam turns bright red. "Uh."

"To be honest," Gabriel continues, since he might as well put all the cards on the table, "it was pretty obvious for a long time."

Sam fiddles with the blankets and doesn't quite look at him. "How long?"

"Years. Probably longer than I've known. I was probably the only one who was in the position to really notice, so don't worry. Dean might've, but." Dean was busy thinking about other things at the time. Namely their father.

Sam flushes even darker. "I don't know what to do."

Gabriel sighs, because really, what can he say? "Look, he's never treated you weirdly because he loves you differently than you love him. He's been hiding just down the hallway all night, too, you know. He's afraid to talk to you because you might push him away permanently." Lucas would rather die than lose Sam. They both know that.

Sam takes a deep breath. "I should probably talk to him, then."

"That might be best," he agrees slowly. "It'll be tricky, if you really can't return his feelings. If you back away, even just to get some breathing room to deal, he's going to think he's lost you. And that won't be pretty." 2 texts and 13 missed calls from Lucas Winchester.

Sam runs a hand through his hair agitatedly. "I—Jesus. Okay. Can you send him in, please?"

Gabriel nods and hesitates before touching Sam's arm lightly. "Good luck."

"Thanks." Sam frowns at his blankets while Gabriel leaves. He hopes that Sam won't lose his brother over this, but he doesn't have high hopes, really. He goes to find Lucas, and hopes, silently, that they'll pull through.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: As evidence of how much of a sucker I am—here's a second chapter to the previously completed fic.

* * *

Sam _knew_ Lucas never really moved on, despite all of their pretending otherwise. He thought maybe, for a while, but more likely he'd been looking for something not really true out of hope that — that it wasn't true.

That held out right up until Lucas walked in on him and Jess making out.

There was really no mistaking the way Lucas went dead white or the way his eyes lingered just a second too long before he laughed it off with a smirk and a wink too reminiscent of Dean when uncomfortable to be honest.

After that, things were just awkward all over again. Sam hated the uncomfortable silences and the way they couldn't quite be at ease with each other. He had been as close and as easy as breathing with his brother his whole life until—until Lucas went and fell in love with him.

Lucas's attempts at pretending otherwise were always kind of half-assed. The most convincing one was the boyfriend he had for a month or two, a strange guy that Lucas had apparently met somewhere, and he just gave Sam the creeps.

Gabriel didn't talk about it either, although they all knew what was going on. Maybe it hadn't been the best idea for them all to live together, maybe Lucas and Sam should've spent some time apart, but none of them could really imagine not being together all the time, so they split the rent and ignored the occasional difficult pauses.

It wasn't that first boyfriend that was the problem. Sam and Jess had been fighting, for no real reason, just jacking up tension between them with no understandable source, when Lucas brought home the second boyfriend. He was an environmentalist type, vegetarian and bright-eyed and smiling. Sam hated him, miserably and reluctantly, but he couldn't stand being around the peppiness and casual affection that his brother shared with this almost-stranger. How long had it been since he'd been able to drop an arm over his twin's shoulders without thinking about implications? Why could they have it when he couldn't?

He and Jess broke up. More specifically, she sat him down in the coffee shop they liked to go to and told him that it wasn't working, gave him meaningful looks, and told him to try and work through his issues.

What issues? Sam wanted to ask, but he knew what she meant. He just didn't want to think about it.

He got home, shaken and heartbroken and angry, to find earlier positions reversed, with Lucas and Mr. Environment entangled on the couch, _their_ couch, while Sam stood startled in the doorway and stared for a moment too long while something dark and twisting ached in his stomach.

"Sam!" Lucas was also obviously caught off-guard and flustered. "I thought you were with…" And then, because he could always tell, he frowned, pushed his boyfriend away, and stood to cross the room. "What's wrong?"

"Jess—" Sam said, because that was the easiest part of the problem to explain, and Lucas understood instantly (of _course_ he did) and next thing he knew the boyfriend had been hustled out the door and Lucas was tugging him over to the couch to try and help him just like old times.

"Tell me," Lucas demanded, and Sam did as best he could.

"Everything is just…really screwed up right now," he muttered, sinking into the couch and letting Lucas move close to him. "Jess broke up with me because apparently I have unresolved issues or something, and I…" He didn't know how to say it. "I'm confused, I guess. I don't really understand what's going on with me." Not like he could really be honest with _Lucas _about what had been bothering. He couldn't even really talk to Gabriel about it. Misery curled up in him and he pressed closer to his brother selfishly. Lucas carefully wrapped an arm around him, caution dripping from his every action.

"I miss the way we used to talk," he mumbled, mostly into Lucas's shoulder, which stiffened at his words. "No, wait, I'm sorry. Shouldn't've brought it up."

Lucas relaxed again slowly. "It's okay." Cold fingers pressed against his wrist. "I'm sorry about Jess."

Sam shrugged. "Are you happy?"

"In general?"

"With Mr. Save-the-whales."

Lucas laughed, dislodging Sam's head slightly. "Is that what you and Gabriel call him? Danny's nice."

"Nice," Sam repeated, and shut his eyes. "That's…uh, nice."

"He's a little boring, disappointingly," Lucas confessed. "He talks about the same things a lot."

"Oh," Sam said. "Sorry about that."

Lucas shrugged again. "Stop it," Sam said. "You keep knocking me off."

"Sorry," Lucas said, and went still. Gabriel found them an hour later in the same position, neither of them willing to move and lose the moment of closeness they'd managed and were afraid of breaking again.

Gabriel, to his credit, only raised an eyebrow and asked, "Want to watch a movie or something?"

They ordered pizza even though it was still afternoon and watched a vaguely funny drama about people on a road trip. Sam must've fallen asleep because he woke up a few hours later still slumped against Lucas, who had also dozed off against the side of the couch. Gabriel had vanished off to somewhere, so Sam reluctantly pulled back, planning to go find him. Lucas looked uncomfortable, head tipping at a terrible angle to rest on the side of the couch. He was beautiful in the darkening evening light. Sam hated himself for thinking that.

Gabriel was tapping away on his laptop when Sam poked his head into Gabriel's bedroom. "Do you have a second?" Sam asked.

"Ugh, please." Gabriel slammed the laptop shut and scooted over on the bed. "Sit."

Sam sat, biting down a comment about dog commands.

"So, good day?" There were layers to Gabriel's choice of words that Sam wasn't really in the mood to pick through.

"No," he said shortly. "Jess and I broke up because she thought I had issues that need resolving."

Gabriel looked unsurprised but sympathetic. Sam wondered how obviously impending it had been.

"At least you and Lucas managed a conversation without someone slinking from the room at first opportunity," he offered in lieu of condolences.

"Yeah," Sam said, staring at his hands. "That was nice, at least."

Gabriel hesitated for a long moment. "Sam…" he said at last, reaching out to touch his arm.

Sam jerked away quickly. "Anyway, I need to go work on, uh, some stuff. So. See you later."

"_Sam_," Gabriel said, sounding frustrated, but Sam slid off the bed and hurried away.

Over the next week, things changed. The environmentalist disappeared without a word from Lucas on the subject. Sam didn't ask whether they'd broken up. He could tell. Following their breakups and undoubtable subsequent emotional distress (admittedly, Lucas didn't seem all that torn up, but losing Jess was like a punch to the gut for Sam), something of the tension between him and Lucas seemed to have broken. Sam found himself pressed closer to Lucas than before, not flinching away as much.

Their conversation relaxed, too, and Sam couldn't find words even in his own head to rationalize how much better he felt to be able to talk to his brother like they used to. It wasn't like they were crawling into each others beds to talk like they had as children, but their jokes and quips came easier, and Sam slid into the rhythm of it without really thinking about it.

Gabriel cornered him after another week had passed.

"Sam," and Sam could tell right off the bat that he wasn't going to like this conversation, "we seriously need to talk, and you can't dodge this one."

Sam let himself be dragged into Gabriel's bedroom as if mirroring the conversation he'd avoided before. Gabriel shoved him down into a chair and frowned at him.

"Look," he said, almost gently. "I don't think you really know you're doing it, but you might want to tone down the touchy-feely stuff."

"Huh?" It wasn't one of Sam's most eloquent responses.

Gabriel shook his head with a flash of pity. "You went from awkward to practically being draped all over him in a day. And I know you don't like talking about it, but I'm going to remind you now of the reason you backed off in the first place."

Something dark curled in Sam's stomach, and he tried to push it away. "What, now you've changed your tune and are all for me being an uncomfortable mess?"

"Do you even know what you're doing?" Gabriel asked incredulously. "Sam, you've basically spent the whole week chatting up someone who you have no attraction to but who has always been interested in you."

"I'm not chatting him up," Sam snapped instantly. "Why the hell shouldn't I have conversations with my brother?"

"Because you're not thinking straight," Gabriel said flatly. "You're heartbroken and confused and you never came to terms with Lucas's attraction to you, but you've been acting like a kid with a crush and have no idea what you're doing. You're going to _hurt_ him, you idiot."

Sam recoiled almost instantaneously. "I wouldn't hurt—"

Gabriel made a bitten off gesture as if he wanted really badly to shut him up. "Sam, he'd drop everything, he'd cut ties with Dean and his friends and everyone if you asked him too. He'd fuck you if you wanted it. Or the other way around, whatever. You're not even aware of how you're acting around him, and he's miserable over trying not to do anything that would spook you off."

Sam bit down his instinctive response and tried to simultaneously pay attention to Gabriel and ignore the pit opening in his stomach.

Gabriel turned gentle again. "I'm not trying to freak you out—just. Do you even know how you feel about him anymore?"

No. He really didn't, and Sam had been trying not to think about what that might mean.

"Hey." Gabriel looked worried when Sam stayed silent. "You okay?"

"It's like some sort of stupid reverse psychology," Sam burst out, and then everything he'd been pretending not to feel came flowing out and Gabriel, being the kind of person that he was, sat and listened to Sam babble stupidly about his terrifyingly beautiful brother and how confused he was lately.

Sam really had to give Gabriel credit for being so _not_ freaked out.

"Wow," Gabriel said when Sam finally wound down. "Been holding that back for a while, haven't you? Usually it's Dean who represses like that."

"Shut up," Sam muttered, flushing. "I was kind of scared, okay?"

Gabriel was still grinning in an irritating way, but he let it go. "Yeah, sure, I get that. And speaking of Dean…"

"He wouldn't ever be able to accept—" Sam couldn't finish that thought.

Gabriel leaned forward, turning serious. "Sam, if you really want this, then you have to be willing to risk losing people. Your friends, Dean, anyone who knows that you and Lucas are brothers, really. Guess it's a good thing you guys aren't identical."

Sam winced. "Yeah, no kidding."

"Also," Gabriel continued, "you can't just go into it with a for-the-heck-of-it mentality. You'd completely destroy Lucas if you guys ever broke up."

"Yeah," Sam said more quietly. He remembered well enough how things had gone last time Lucas had thought he would lose Sam.

"So, be careful." Gabriel paused for a second and then silently offered Sam a hug, which he took gratefully.

"I will," he promised, and went to go think by himself for a while.


End file.
